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Campaigners attack 'licence to clone and kill'

January 1st, 2003

News that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is today likely to approve Professor Ian Wilmut's application for a licence to perform cell nuclear replacement, a type of human cloning, has been greeting with grave concern by The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). Professor Wilmut is the scientist who cloned Dolly the Sheep. He wants to conduct experiments on human cells for medical purposes. Anthony Ozimic from SPUC said: "Any 'licence to clone and kill' strikes at the very heart our society's basic rule for living together in peace, which is 'do not kill the innocent', because the cloning process kills many innocent embryonic human beings at their most vulnerable stage of life. All of those killed are unique, never-to-be-replaced human beings. "Any human biology textbook will tell you that our life began when we first formed as an embryo. The biological facts are clear. To treat or disguise human embryos as if they were nothing but raw laboratory material is both deceitful and disturbing. It is complete hypocrisy for the HFEA to talk about the 'unique moral status of the embryo' when the HFEA licenses his or her killing. "So-called therapeutic cloning exploits human beings and uses them as resources rather than respecting them as persons. As Dr Harry Griffin, who helped Dr Wilmut create Dolly the sheep, admitted: '[Therapeutic cloning] is clearly not therapeutic for the embryo.' "More than two decades of destructive embryo research has produced none of the cures which its promoters prophesied would be found, whereas adult stem cell research is already providing answers to neurological conditions like motor neurone disease. Anyone can go to www.stemcellresearch.org and find out why adult stem cell research makes human cloning redundant." Source: SPUC

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